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Past studies have shown how many neurons are involved in a single, simple memory. Researchers might be able to isolate a few single neurons "in the process of summoning a memory", but that is like saying that they have isolated a few water molecules in the runoff of a giant hydroelectric dam. The practical utility of this is highly questionable.

Many things in science have little practical utility until well after the fact. We could name a lot from mathematics alone, someones little curiousity becomes some key concept for understanding some other problem somewhere down the line. While I agree not all of them turn out like that, the fact is we're going to have dead ends no matter which way you slice it, it's one long search for what is true and relevant.

That isn't the point; the study isn't claiming to have deduced how memory works (I like the fun theories involving microtubules and quantum fields there, but hey). It simply shows that activation patterns during recall correlate with those during actual experience, much like is the case with memory encoding in REM sleep.

This is significant because those correlations in experience and recall can profoundly effect our current mental state and environment. Imagery is a tool used very efficiently in sports

Past studies have shown how many neurons are involved in a single, simple memory.

The article even says:

Dr. Fried said in a phone interview that the single neurons recorded firing most furiously during the film clips were not acting on their own; they were, like all such cells, part of a circuit responding to the videos, including thousands, perhaps millions, of other cells.

The practical utility of this is highly questionable

Where in the article does it suggest this has practical utility? It seemed to me to

Knowing how a memory is stored and how the brain can recreate it might lead to some crazy new technologies in the future, such as being able to load gigabytes of data into your brain by using energy to manipulate the brain into "remembering" things that were never there. Of course, it could lead to some extremely scary scenarios, like messing with people's heads by putting things in there that aren't supposed to be. I hope the scientists are being really, really careful on this one!

Actually, it could serve as a way to punish criminals without burning through tax dollars with prison time.
Just take all of their most beloved memories and replace them with a picture of Chuck Norris and the sensation of being kicked in the groin.
For example, from their wedding day, all they'll remember is: "Honey, I d--Chuck Norris?! Ow, my groin!"

Maybe you are onto something there. Perhaps it would be appropriate punishment to take the memories from the people affected by their crimes and cram them into the criminals head so that he personally experience the impact of what he's done. At the same time you would have to replace any positive aspects of personal gain or gratifaction that he received. The next time he considers commiting a crime, he'll have a lot more to think about...

You make the assumption that somehow criminals would regret what they did if they knew what its impact was. You seem to forget that many people become criminals because they grew up experiencing that impact without being implanted with false memories.

I wonder what will happen if you stimulate the neurons instead of listening to them. Despite the impressive results obtained, we still know nothing about how the brain stores memories. Maybe stimulating the neurons in a patient will help understanding that a bit.

To summarize the article, researchers have determined that the neurons which are fired when an event is experienced are the same neurons that are fired when it is remembered. That's all it says. It does not say that our experiences and memories don't independently exist, just that they correlate with neural activity.

September 5, 2008For the Brain, Remembering Is Like RelivingBy BENEDICT CAREY

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.

Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).

The experiment, being reported Friday in the journal Science, is likely to open a new avenue in the investigation of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, some experts said, as well as help explain how some memories seemingly come out of nowhere. The researchers were even able to identify specific memories in subjects a second or two before the people themselves reported having them.

"This is what I would call a foundational finding," said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. "I cannot think of any recent study that's comparable.

"It's a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel" of summoning past experiences.

The new study moved beyond most previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection of specific symbols but on free recall â" whatever popped into people's heads when, in this case, they were asked to remember short film clips they had just seen.

This ability to richly reconstitute past experience often quickly deteriorates in people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory â" the catalog of vignettes that together form our remembered past.

In the study, a team of American and Israeli researchers threaded tiny electrodes into the brains of 13 people with severe epilepsy. The electrode implants are standard procedure in such cases, allowing doctors to pinpoint the location of the mini-storms of brain activity that cause epileptic seizures.

The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows like "Seinfeld" and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain known to be critical to forming memories.

In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others.

After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report "what comes to mind." The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one â" say, a clip of Homer Simpson â" the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.

"It's astounding to see this in a single trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we were listening in the right place," said the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Tel Aviv.

His co-authors were Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Michal Harel and Rafael Malach of

It isn't the most elegant post but the mods definitely need to mod this up. The idea that neuroscience retreads the ground trod by cognitive scientists, psychologists and psyhcophysicists is essentially and profoundly true.
Take the case of light detection where a study by Hecht, Schlaer & Pirenne done with psychophysical methods in the 40s estimated the minimum number of photons needed to detect a light. This result was only "measured directly" by neuroscientists in the late 1980s.
Color vision is an

Yeah but eventually you have to pop it open and take a peek inside - making conclusions from observable behaviour only takes you so far. Unfortunately neuroscience was stuck in a rut for a long time and only in the early 90s did it begin to emerge and embrace some new ideas.

This is the kind of claim you make in the NY Times or another public media outlet: while it might happen, because sometimes people do stupid things, I doubt the actual research article will go so far as to say anything so far-fetched.

While it makes logical sense (memory, so far as it is located any single place, does seem to be strongly linked to the deeper, distinct organs within the brain, like the hippocampus), there is no actual way to "know" what exactly is going on: this is a quasi-experimental design, at best, and at most all they can reliably say is "Similiar structures in the brain responded in a similar way during recall of an event compared with how they behaved during the observation of the event itself." For example, it has been shown in some studies that areas in the occipital area of the brain (which has been strongly linked to vision) "light up" when a subject is asked to describe a previously viewed visual stimulus: however, researchers in these studies make no claims to such being evidence of an observed activation of a memory, which is essentially the claim being made here. Typically, the most they will offer in such studies is that the brain may be "spoofed" into thinking it is viewing the same stimulus again, thus activating certain, similiar function. Logically, both the visual research and this phenomena certainly sound like memory: but logic isn't science, nor is something true because it makes logical sense. Newtonian mechanics make logical sense, but good luck building a model of the universe as successful as one provided by quantum/relativistic physics, which often times make utterly no logical sense.

This is one of the key problems in any kind of study concerning phenomena which are part and parcel of the conscious mind/brain: being that we do not experience the subject's perceptions ourselves, and since consciousness is so singular and personal, we might never be able to say with any clear confidence what we are observing in the brain. However, kudos to the researchers. At the very least they've examined a function (whatever it is) within the brain that is an utter pain in the ass to study.

I'm kind of surprised that entrepreneurs haven't come up with a device to stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain yet. Granted, it would probably take a bit of surgery to install, but if you weren't convinced it was the coolest toy ever, you would be after a few pushes of the button.

I've read a number of books which discuss in detail the fact that memory is stored non-locally, in a method similar to the way a hologram stores information non-locally. The book 'The Holographic Universe' is the most recent example that I've read. It's a fascinating book - well worth a read. In fact I've read it twice now. With respect to memory, it goes on to say that in experiments with mice, researchers said they were incapable of destroying a memory of how to complete a maze by surgically removing brain tissue. The more they removed, the more foggy the memory appeared, but it never disappeared. This strongly backs the holographic storage method that the book postulates.

If these scientists think they've seen an individual brain cell recall a memory, then I think they're horribly mistaken.

The first thing that came to mind(no pun intended) was that if a memory resides in a certain cerebral location, and all one would have to do to locate it is elicit that memory in a person, while scanning them, then one can conclude that once this has occurred, one could then go in and physically REMOVE the memory by destroying that particular location in the brain.

Maybe that was what Obi Wan was doing. He simply used telekinesis to destroy specific brain cells while rewriting in another location with verbal suggestion......"These are not the 'droids you are looking for......".

For every guy out there, (misogynist comment inbound) I have to say I hope this leads to better understanding of how women communicate and remember things as compared to men. Perhaps there will be a translator, or a pill to make them more understandable? doh!

Well, perhaps this will lead to true understanding of memories, and how the brain actually functions. I hope. I'd like to see some real AI in my lifetime and the human brain is the best example we have of how to create that.

I just want to know when I will be able to download into my mind knowledge. I'll take an order of all the languages in the world, with a side of advanced mathematics and physics, and maybe some animal science for dessert.

Even if they stretched first they'd have to be able to balance rather than just know the actual techniques. Someone else's "muscle memories" of how to balance properly while performing a technique will likely be different from the ones you need, if your weight distribution is different.

Are you saying that when Lex Luthor and The Flash switched minds, they didn't swap cerebellum memories, which allowed Luthor access to The Flash's powers and denied The Flash use of them in Luthor's body?

I want it to work the other way, as a backup mechanism. Every day I get older, and a bit of my RAM seems to fizz & burn and takes away the bytes that were stored in there. I accept the irreplaceable loss of the memory but I wish I didn't forget things too. I could easily page out the least-used memories and store them safely off-site.

No one I know has ever contested that memories are stored in the "mind." What is debated is whether they are stored in the brain (as opposed to DNA, RNA, patterns in the physical structure of the brain, ect.) In this subject that distinction is very important. Particularly given that from a neuroscience perspective, "Mind" and "Soul" might as well be synonymous.

This is certainly a large step towards understanding memories, but it doesn't tell us anything about where the memories are stored, just what part of the brain activates when a memory is recalled. (That they've got it down to specific neurons is either highly impressive or a exaggeration in my estimation.)

Oh and "Soul" = "Dark Energy" you know "We have no fucking clue how to account for the data so we're going to name it this until we come up with something better."

When they can isolate the "Bing" moment (the point at which neurological function gives rise to experiential phenomenon) then we can put down the idea of a soul entirely, not before.

When they can isolate the "Bing" moment (the point at which neurological function gives rise to experiential phenomenon) then we can put down the idea of a soul entirely, not before.

Sadly, not everyone will. While everyone who has a clue about science certainly will, a lot of people rather trust religion than science and will continue to believe that memories are stored in the soul. After all, there are also a lot of people out there who still believe in ID, even with all the overwhelming scientific research against it.

I think that for some people the 'soul' theory is the reason they trust religion, not the other way around.
You'll have to agree that it is a bit depressing knowing for certain that your existence is just the few years you spend 'alive' and after that it's all gone. And for some, it's too depressing.
Humans need to know they'll live on somehow, that their lives have some meaning. And if you're not famous enough to hope for historical eternal life, than soul is what you have left.

Actually, I find the thought of simply ceasing to exist not that bad; although I seriously don't want to die (and thus are transhumanist), believing in no afterlife were you would be judged gives you a nice feeling of freedom - while religious people usually try to avoid a lot of things since they want to reach heaven (or whatever else they believe in how they will be rewarded for a life devoted to their god[s]), I act on my own moral criterias without any pressure, being free to choose what is right and what not on my own.

believing in no afterlife were you would be judged gives you a nice feeling of freedom - while religious people usually try to avoid a lot of things since they want to reach heaven (*snip*), I act on my own moral criterias without any pressure

For a long while I've thought that, while it takes a large amount of moral stamina to live by most religious codes, it takes as much if not more to realize that the responsibility for determining what's good and what's evil lies squarely on your own shoulders, and still do the right thing

That's exactly how I see it as well. I think the posters above can only calmly reach their conclusions by not really internalizing the fact that they're going to die. I did, and I wish I never had, because it's hard to think calmly about death after you've made that logically emotional leap (i.e., when you "realize" that what you've been thinking about this whole time is actually "real"). That's why I only go to bed when I'm really, really tired. I get to thinking about it when lying in bed, and it will

Sarah Forbes: Doesn't give you much comfort does it? Not believing in an afterlife.Kurt Mendel: On the contrary, it gives me lots of comfort.Sarah Forbes: How can the prospect of nonexistence be comforting?Kurt Mendel: I look at it like this: before I came on stage, the Universe had been around for twelve billion years. All that time I was in a state of nonexistence, and it wasn't bad. Pretty comfortable as a matter of fact. I figure it'll be just as comfortable for the next twelve billion years.Sarah Forbe

I once heard a bit on the rise of science against religion. The crux of the argument was that science should be viewed and approached with an eye more toward humanism.

In the Dark Ages, God was viewed as someone who controlled everything. If something bad happened, there was a reason. If something good happened, there was a reason. Priests where the ones who understood that pattern, and each of us had a friend looking down benevolently (overall) to take care of us.

The rise of science began to make the world a hostile, unpredictable place. Of course, science must studied, information gathered, and one day man could make sense of his (now inscrutable) destiny and place in the universe.

I believe the argument went that this shift in thinking, from having a plan to not having any has caused a lot of strife. Of course, we're more rational (some of us) but this does not change the fact that we often feel alone and insignificant, whirling through the ether.

The solution was to try and find a way to help people view science as less about cold calculation, but more as a friend, a helpful and predictable Cosmic Hand that doesn't flip us off, but rather is working behind the scenes, as God once did, to keep everything working in The Bigger Plan.

Particularly given that from a neuroscience perspective, "Mind" and "Soul" might as well be synonymous.

Actually, scientifically speaking "soul" is not synonymous to much else than "religious mumbo jumbo".

It's a redundant hypothesis that doesn't really explain anything, it doesn't provide a single experimentable prediction and it's beyond observations by definition. You might need it for your faith, but science sure as hell has no use for it.

When I download the latest X-Files movie, I'm not stealing because I'm not making off with a physical object. However, the memories in my mind are a physical object, and therefore not metaphysical mumbo jumbo....Wait, what? What is this sudden stench of hypocrisy?

Maybe information is not physical, but some sort of abstract collection of relations between bits of data, and more or less separate from the media which contains the data? Maybe something along the lines of Russell's definition of mathematics...

Why is it everyone assumes that the soul-world connection works both ways? Who's to say that every consciousness isn't just a listener, somehow able to interpret a mind, and what's going on, and yet have no magical abilities over the matter contained therein. If I put someone who is in a very drowsy state in front of a TV, give them a steering wheel, and show a first person video if reckless driving, they'll think they're doing it. They'll try to avoid things (or hit things).

When they can isolate the "Bing" moment (the point at which neurological function gives rise to experiential phenomenon) then we can put down the idea of a soul entirely, not before.

No, we can put it down right now. No one has adequately defined "soul," so there is no reason to believe one exists. There is no "bing" moment (is that a technical term?). The differentiation of our experience from our physical bodies is an illusion.

Just because you perceive something to be so doesn't mean that is the way it is. If you think the mind, soul, and body are differentiable, provide some evidence.

I agree that this story is not a good place for this thread, so I'll try to keep my response as short as possible.

Richard Dawkins (a very brilliant person, regardless of his beliefs) has a lot to say [ted.com] on the matter of why science and religion should not (in his opinion) be compatible. He considers himself a "militant atheist", and wishes more atheists would follow in his steps. Whether or not I considered myself an atheist, I would agree that atheists SHOULD listen to what he's saying. It's a very interestin

If you're going to make objective assertions about reality without adequate justification, I'm going to pigeonhole you as someone who is capable of and willing to make objective assertions about reality without adequate justification. I don't suffer fools gladly. Even if you're only deceiving yourself, you're still creating a negative environment.

This stale approach to thinking and life has to be shouted down at every opportunity for the benefit of those whose minds are changed, and to improve the opportunities of people both young and old to thrive in an environment of intellectual integrity.

Anyone who believes that they will meet (and remember) their deceased family members when they get to Heaven. Anyone who thinks that they will still have and/or know their own name when they get to Heaven. Anyone who believes in ghosts. So probably about 80% of Americans (that's not an attack, just an estimate).

a) A soul has a weight, a mass that can be measured when someone passes away. Often referred to as the weight of the soul.

Yes, a couple of grams. Of the exhaled air...

b) When someone passes, the light or spark that you see in their eyes seems to disappear - not sure of a way to quantify that.

Yeah, kind of like when you take a photo. After a little while, the eyes start drying out too, removing any sparks left.

c) There have been multiple instances where enough facts (in some cases hundreds of years old) have been researched and IMO past lives verified. The cases I find most interesting are the ones where young children have mentioned facts that were later verified as being true. The one where a young boy

Now hold on there, sheriff. There's no way to prove that they didn't have the information long before they told you. Hoaxes like that gain the involved lots of publicity and possibly money. Don't you think some people are willing to do it?If you want to see, you will see.

By BENEDICT CAREYPublished: September 5, 2008For the first time, scientists have recorded individual brain cells fetching a spontaneous memory.For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes.com

I sometimes have epileptic seizures which make me spontaneously remember past events. Sometimes it causes me to recall events which may not have happened. I am literally processing garbage data.

The seizure often interferes with the recording of memory, probably because it is messing with the replay of memory at the same time, so it is difficult to report exactly what the experience consists of after the event, beyond a simple outline.

That's quite fascinating! (I hope the condition isn't too serious, of course.) The idea of a brain processing garbage data is certainly thought-provoking. Do you have any buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could lead to an exploit?

A few years back a/.er told of recovering from a seizure like their brain rebooting, senses coming online one-by-one. I wish I could find the link now.

That might be a good way to describe it, but it is probably not close to what actually happens. Long term memory is one of the most vulnerable brain functions. It is the first to be lost when anything goes wrong and the last to come back.

My recollection of recovering from a grand mal seizure is that of vague memories early on and better memories later. That is consistent with long term memory starting to come back. But the spotty early memories include myself apparently behaving normally: talking to people, etc. So simple functions may come back quote quickly.

I have never had a seizure, but what you describe stuck me as being very much the same as the experience of waking up from a surgery under full anesthesia. In both cases when I was put under, I can very vaguely recall being woken up at the end of it and sent on my way, and I know that I was fully aware and behaving normally -- only to suddenly realize an hour later that I couldn't recall a damn thing about leaving the clinic or the ride home.

That's quite fascinating! (I hope the condition isn't too serious, of course.) The idea of a brain processing garbage data is certainly thought-provoking. Do you have any buffer overflow vulnerabilities that could lead to an exploit?

Possibly. When I was a teenager I would sometimes be terrified of small things. I don't have a fear of heights except a small height like standing on a curb could generate strange fears.

I took medication for my condition between the ages of 19 and 25. It is mostly under control now, possibly because of the medication but also possibly because I have learnt what states to avoid.

I am very much aware that the brain is not a stored program computer. Memory, behaviour and (to some extent illness) are all har

Well I have created a few humans already and they also have children. The normal way is much easier. As far as neural arrays that exceed human understanding this is a sticky question when you ask who would be the designated driver. Very much depends on how all this is implemented and I imagine it will be a bigger zoo than the internet. It is easy to use machines to increase our effectiveness but it levels the playing field of who is smarter when everybody has an AI as an advisor. It seems we are backing into another problem like the internet and how it influences life itself in odd ways.It is good to consider what it will become before it becomes a reality. I think the goals of the people who create the machines will tell how they effect those who don't prepare for the eventuality.

Introducing Google Recall(tm pending), the search engine for your brain! With Google Recall you can catalog your memories and review them at a later time, or share them with your friends online!

EULA: By using Google Recall you grant Google a perpetual license to use your memories, and any Intellectual Property contained therein, in any way we see fit. We can tell you just read this EULA, therefore you have used the service, thus accepting these terms of service.